Quick Howto: Setting Webcam In The Workshop.


cosurgi

cosurgi

http://janek.kozicki.pl/
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I have setup this at my work place, for personal use. It's VPN only and no public address (so you can't see me, but my wife can ;) ) And it all just works over www. On linux of course.

  • Code: 
    aptitude install motion
    or just install motion on any linux distro that you use.
  • review your /etc/motion/motion.conf, I did change only following things:
    Code: 
    daemon on
width 640
height 480
framerate 6
webcam_localhost off
    Besides that I used the basic install defaults and they worked like a charm. The default port is webcam_port 8081, so your webcam could be at http://www.open-pandora.org:8081. Also to have continuous filming, you will set
    Code: 
    treshold 0
  • Code: 
    sudo /etc/init.d/motion start
And, like with everything on linux - it just works.

Curently I'm using motion version 3.2.11-2. Latest one, 3.2.11-2+b1, had some issues ;D
 
gibberish said:
Has Craig even confirmed that the 'Old Village Hall' has an internet connection yet?
Click to expand...
No he hasn't. If there is no connection in the hall then a v_e_r_y long cable from craigixs' house will be needed.
 
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Especially like broadband that allows 4000+ people to watch and shout ... I WANT THAT ONE ... THAT ONE WAS ASSEMBLED BY THE FAT GUY, I DONT WANT THAT ONE :(

But Linux guru ... howto forwards a webcam stream using my webserver? Using Debian Linux, got 100mbit and need something todo until it runs my server apps.
 
cosurgi said:
Also to have continuous filming, you will set
Code: 
treshold 0
Click to expand...
Oh, in fact you don't need to change that at all. Stream feed over www is enabled whenever anyone watches. The treshold is only used for recording. So when nothing happens, the images go to www (if anyone is watching), and then to /dev/null instead of being recorded to *avi.

Also, motion is quite clever about bandwidth, because by default the setting:
Code: 
webcam_limit 10
tells that whenever anyone goes to watch, he will see only 10 frames. And then he would need to refresh the webpage. So the stream isn't continuous, it stops, whenever you stop watching. IMHO to avoid people complaining too much, and depending on your bandwidth, you could set webcam_limit to 30 seconds, or 1 minute or 2 minutes. Of course you need to multiply by framerate.

webcam_limit seconds-of-continuous-watch * framerate

So for 30 secons at 6 frames per second, you set webcam_limit to 180.

Motion sets up it's own (very small & light) webserver. It doesn't depend on apache or any other bulky apps. (In fact, writing a simple webserver is just 5 lines in python, and most likely one line in perl ;) , so motion can do that too, on its own.)

Besides that motion is the easiest webcam software that I have found (and I looked quite a while to find it), I honestly don't know how it does handle heavy traffic.
 
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Bigun said:
craigix said:
It has a 1.5mbps connection.
Click to expand...

Will that be enough? Only way I can see that working is to choke the hell out of the framerate or quality. I vote framerate myself.
Click to expand...

Or just relay the video stream to a server with a fatter pipe. I dont see it happening anyway tbh, nice idea but there are more important things to worry about.
 
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